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A high-ranking executive at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas is on his way out after four years.

Steve LeBlanc – a senior managing director who oversaw the real assets, private equity, and principal investments portfolio at the $110 billion public pension fund – is leaving to “return to private life and the creation of new companies,” TRS said in a written statement.

Tim Lee, executive director of the Texas Retired Teachers Association, said he spoke with TRS Executive Director Brian Guthrie on Tuesday. Guthrie, who was attending a pension conference in San Francisco, confirmed that LeBlanc was departing but would remain in his position through early June, Lee said.

LeBlanc, who was hired at TRS in 2008 after serving as president and chief executive officer of REIT Summit Properties in Austin, was the public face of TRS’ strategy to invest more in alternative investments such as real estate and private equity.

He was a regular on CNBC. The Wall Street Journal in February published his op-ed that discussed how presidential politics had aimed a spotlight on a “financial sector that was previously unknown to many Americans.”

“It’s called private equity and, from my perspective, it has provided a very public good,” LeBlanc wrote.

When TRS hired private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Apollo Global Management to each manage $3 billion of the pension fund’s assets, LeBlanc described it as the “culmination of a multi-year effort to create a private market partnership platform that will support the needs of TRS and its beneficiaries.”

More than 1.3 million public education employees, higher education staffers, and retirees participate in the TRS system.